1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to communication systems, and in particular, communications systems capable of targeting a demographically or psychographically defined audience.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Although television has historically been a broadcast technology (meaning programs and commercials are designed for `mass appeal` without segmentation by demographic or psychographic factors), a number of techniques have evolved for targeting select audiences.
Advertisers start with the profile of the target customer for their product or service. Market research companies routinely audit television show audiences (via phone survey, mail, etc.) to characterize the demographic and psychographic profile of viewers. Advertisers use this information to pick programs with large numbers of viewers most like the target customer. Naturally, this information also helps the advertiser shape the content of the advertisement so as to appeal to the tastes of the target audience.
Targeting advertising by television program has a fundamental problem, however. Audiences are heterogeneous, making it impossible for advertisers to get the appropriate message efficiently to only the target audience. With conventional television, it is impossible to split the audience into finer groups, targeting each with a different commercial message. This is a universally useful capability, as will be shown in Objects and Advantages.
With the advent of cable television systems, new methods were developed to target programming, driven by the need to control viewing of pay-per-view programs. The addressable converter was developed (see prior art, for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,475,123, 4,625,235, 4,638,359, 4,716,410). These addressable systems assign each household's set-top addressable converter a unique address. In response to a viewer's order for a pay channel or pay-per-view event, an address and authorization command is sent to that viewer's converter. A disadvantage of using this approach for targeting advertising is immediately obvious: pay-per-view addressability is not transparent to the viewer who must first order the program and then tune it in at the broadcast time.
In addition, this approach of transmitting a list of authorized addresses is inefficient for targeting advertising by household based on psychographic and demographic data. The viewers of each pay-per-view event change in a way not predictable by knowledge of the household's demographics and psychographics. Hence, a complete list of authorized addresses must be transmitted. By contrast, targeted advertising will often utilize the same demographic/psychographic parameters. Thus, transmission requirements can be reduced by storing each household's demographic and psychographic data at the set-top and only transmitting the selection profiles defining the target audience.
The most elementary type of targeting involves the use of split cable system as detailed in U.S. Pat. No. #3,366,731, issued Jan. 30, 1968 to Edward Wallerstein for Television Distribution System Permitting Program Substitution for Selected Viewers. A split cable system is constructed with two cables originating from a single transmitting source. One advertisement is inserted on one cable and another advertisement on the other cable. The limitation of this approach is that it can only be applied to split cable systems, and does not allow arbitrary selection of target audiences.
A further refinement of television targeting technology is shown in U.S. Pat. 3,639,686, issued Feb. 1, 1972 to Harold R. Walker and Ira Kamen for Television Receiver Cut-In Device. This system uses an auxiliary television signal which contains both a video channel and control information. The auxiliary television signal is broadcast throughout a broadcast area with a particular control signal identifying the class of viewers to be reached by the auxiliary television signal. Each television receiver has a special decoder to decode and interpret the control signals. The decoder switches to the special signal when it receives a particular address signal identifying the decoder as in the class to which the signals are to be transmitted. The limitation of this approach is that the information contained in the receivers is static-once the receivers have been programmed with information and installed in a viewer's house it cannot be updated. Thus, Walker's targeting cannot be varied at the will of advertisers/market researchers.
Two approaches to the static nature of Walker's targeting have been advanced in the prior art. U.S. Pat No. 4,602,279 Freeman, M. J. "Method For Providing Targeted Profile Interactive CATV Displays" assignor to ACTV, Inc. Port Washington, N.Y. details a system that relies on viewer input of demographic data. The system utilizes the excess bandwidth of the cable system to transmit multiple commercials. A selection profile (what class of viewer) is transmitted from the head-end (in the vertical blanking interval). However, the actual demographic data is acquired interactively from the viewer (e.g. the tv displays questions like "Are you a cat lover?, How old are you?, What car do you drive?" and the set-top stores the answers). The answers are compared with the selection profile to determine the proper channel selection. While innovative in design, the system requires input from the user to form the demographic database. This interactivity is likely to annoy users--and there is no guarantee that viewers would respond. Further, advertisers could not be guaranteed that their commercial was being viewed by a household watching a particular channel. In addition, this is a capability that is not present in the installed base of conventional addressable set-top converters.
The other approach is to bypass the local storage of any demographic data, and instead just transmit a list of receiver addresses belonging to a certain class, followed by a control signal transmission (e.g. if class 1, then switch to channel 10). U.S. Pat. No. 4,331,974 issued May 25, 1982 to Ned W. Cogswell, Gerald J. Eskin and Andrew Wright, Jr. for Cable Television With Controlled Signal Substitution takes this approach.
Three pieces of information are transmitted to the home: normal television channel, the substitute channel used for transmitting the substitute commercial, and the list of household addresses to respond to the substitution. To overcome the burdens of real-time transmissions, the data is split into two pieces and transmitted separately. Prior to the commercial, an event number and the list of households to be effected by each substitution is transmitted and stored. The households can be considered as members of an `event set`. This step requires large amounts of data to be transmitted. The specifics of a given substitution (event number, normal television channel, the substitute channel used for transmitting the substitute commercial) are transmitted immediately prior to the commercial break, and processed in real-time at each household. Thus, real-time targeting of commercials can occur. In addition, unlike Freeman's invention, advertisers can control which households receive a given commercial advertisement.
The system also includes a method for gathering demographic/psychographic information-scanner purchase statistics collected from specially wired stores in the viewing area.
This approach suffers from a number of limitations, however. First, changing the selection profile (which households are selected) requires a retransmission of the event set. This may not be possible in the change is made close to when commercial broadcast occurs. Second, it is inefficient. Cogswell's approach must transmit a list of household addresses for each different selection profile utilized. Since most selection profiles will be comprised of different `slices` of a fairly small set of demographic/psychographic parameters (e.g. name, address, zip, age, occupation, household income, . . . ), great redundancy in data transmission exists in Cogswell's approach. Third, a powerful computer in the head-end is needed to sort demographic/psychographic data and generate the lists of households which will receive a given advertisement. Lastly, Cogswell's approach relies to a large extent on information volunteered by and collected directly from panelists. Problems with this approach include: the logistical headache and expense of gathering information from large numbers of viewers and invalid data (incomplete/incorrect information provided by viewers). This is again a special system, not compatible with the installed base of set-tops.